Kage (35 page)

breathless. The only reason I survived was because someone else

had kicked El Carnicero in the head, stunning him. We were

dragged apart. I stood bent over, lungs frozen in momentary

nerve paralysis. Then they gave a painful heave and I started

breathing again.

The people Steve Hasegawa had spotted now swarmed

over and subdued the members of TM-7. They moved with

smooth, brutal efficiency; Latinos in camouflage clothing

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John Donohue

wearing weapons, harnesses, and carrying machine pistols a

lot like Daley’s. They weren’t dressed like gang members. They

were young and fit and looked like soldiers.

A man pointed a stubby, black pistol at me. He had a

broad, impassive face and a heavy Mexican accent. “What is

your name?” he asked. He didn’t seem particularly interested

in hearing the answer, but I told him anyway. Another man

was rolling the stunned El Carnicero over, frisking him, and

making sure he had no other weapons. The man with the pistol

jerked his head. “And he?”

“He’s the one I told you about, Capitán,” Daley said, emerg-

ing from behind the adobe building. “El Carnicero.”

The broad-faced captain smiled. “Ah,
bueno.”
He looked

at me.
“
He doesn’t like your friend much, Daley.” Then he

reached behind him and pulled a thick manila envelope out

of his waistband. It looked about the right size to hold a thick

wad of money. He tossed it to Daley, who caught it with a grin.

Behind the Capitán, the men with the machine pistols were

making gang members kneel in the dirt. Some of the TM-7

people tried to put up a fight. That’s when the pistols staring

popping and the executions began. The sun was setting; the

weapons flashed in the dimming light.

“OK, I delivered them to you,” Daley said. It was as if the

shooting of young men not thirty feet from where we stood was

taking place somewhere else; he was completely disinterested.

“Now we boogie out of here. Me and Burke.”

The broad-faced man shook his head. “
Lo siento
, Daley. I

am afraid he knows too much.”

Daley’s eyes narrowed. “The deal was that we both walk.”

“Deals change,” the Capitán sighed. “If I were you, I would

go.” He began to raise his pistol toward me. As he did, Daley

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Kage

tossed a flash-bang grenade toward us. The man who was about

to kill me glanced at the thing rolling toward us for a split

second.

And at that exact moment, the scrub all around the perime-

ter rippled with noise and light and high velocity rounds began

slicing through the air.

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21

Scramble

Some kind of rocket or RPG arced in and blew up a Hum-

mer. The detonation made us stagger; the Capitán was already

squeezing the trigger of his gun and the shot went wild. Then

I heard him grunt, twisting under the sudden force of multiple

bullet wounds. I was already moving, and out of the corner

of my eye I noticed that El Carnicero was trying to scram-

ble away from the killing zone as well. I stumbled backwards,

momentarily incapable of doing anything but taking in the

chaotic scene. The smoking Hummer listed, broken backed

and pocked with bullet holes. There was someone inside, but

he wasn’t moving.
Xochi.

The Capitán’s men had been surprised, but they didn’t

panic. They scuttled into positions, setting up a defensive

perimeter with what cover they could get. They were well

armed and began returning fire. The surviving gang members,

on the other hand, were scrambling in every direction. The

meeting place was being lashed with gunfire. The trucks were

riddled with bullets, the dust jumped under their impact, and

the occasional ricochet zinged through the air.

I finally tore myself away, lurched toward the adobe build-

ing and dove through an empty window. Daley was already

on the floor there, his face smudged with dust and sweat. His

washed out eyes glowed an eerie blue, as if excitement was

providing some internal light. From outside, we heard muted

yells, shouted orders in Spanish, and the more piercing crack of

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Kage

weapons. Rounds punched in through the walls of the build-

ing, showering us with dust.

“We gotta move, Burke,” Daley grunted, jerking his head

toward the rear doorway. “Get to the arroyo, follow it west;

when it forks, take the north branch and hunker down in the

rocks up there. You with me?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Let’s

go!” He cocked his machine pistol, slid across the floor, and

shot out the rear door. I hesitated for a moment, not sure that

this was what I needed to do. Bullets began gouging larger and

larger chunks out of the walls. Splinters of wood mixed in the

air with the dust and dirt. I took a deep breath and followed

Daley’s path out the back.

The arroyo was about five feet deep, a twisting gouge in

the earth lined with spindly brush and studded with rocks. I

glanced around. Twenty yards to my right, a few gang mem-

bers were hunkered down in the depression, sticking pistols up

and firing blindly in the directions where they thought targets

might be. They were cursing and sweating, loading their pis-

tols with frantic, jerky movements and simultaneously casting

about for an escape route. The firefight whipped all along the

clearing, with muzzle flashes and small explosions everywhere. I

glanced along the arroyo bed to the west, but Daley was already

out of sight.

I should have followed him. I didn’t know what was

going on, who was out there in the bush shooting at the

Capitán and his men, but I knew that if El Carnicero some-

how got away, he’d blame me for this ambush and hunt me

down later. I thought of
Los Gemenos
, of the toll already

taken on Sarah, and I knew I couldn’t let it happen again.

If El Carnicero was still alive, I had to get to him and make

sure he didn’t escape.

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John Donohue

It was a crazy idea; I was unarmed in the middle of a roiling

gunfight between three armed groups. And perhaps I should

have followed Daley’s lead and tried to escape myself. But you

don’t think very clearly when bullet rounds are ripping the

air all around you, when you can hear cries of pain and fear

and anger even through the din of battle. You’re running on

impulse and emotion, your mouth dry and your eyes wide. The

brain is scanning the environment for danger, not mapping out

possible actions three moves ahead.

At this point, it was all body think. I dragged myself over the

lip of the arroyo and wormed my way across the hard ground

and back into the killing zone. The few surviving TM-7 mem-

bers had scattered. They were isolated and ineffective, and like

the two in the arroyo, appeared to be focused mainly on escape.

The Capitán’s men, on the other hand, had taken some casu-

alties, but even with the loss of their leader they didn’t panic.

They were putting out rounds, seeking targets, and calling to

one another to coordinate fire and movement.

These were soldier’s skills. I realized with a chill that they

were the Alphas. It all fit: their jumping the meeting with

TM-7 and their animosity toward the gang, their interest in the

manuscript with its cross border trails, and their paramilitary

appearance. The hair on the nape of my neck rose. I was chilled

with the awareness of just how dangerous a place I was in.

I inched my way along the base of one of the building’s

walls, trying to get a glimpse of the last place where El Car-

nicero had lain. I tasted dirt and could smell the heat leaking

from the rocks as the day waned and the air cooled. The light

was fading and the air was filled with a blue mist, but I could

see that El Carnicero was gone. Someone spotted my move-

ment. I heard rounds impacting into the wall near me, and the

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Kage

little animal I had become scuttled behind the building and

back into the arroyo and relative safety.

I looked to my right. The two TM-7 members down the

gully were down, crumpled in the awkward stillness of the

dead. And leaning over them was the lean form of El Carnicero,

rifling the bodies in search of a weapon.

I went for him without thought or plan. My hands were

extended with the urge to break him. I was panting with the

effort of bringing all that I had to bear on the attack. The Japa-

nese speak of
kime
, a type of integrated focus that yokes intent

and capability, the will of the actor with bone and sinew and

muscle memory. But don’t be fooled; it’s an elegant fiction, far

removed from the reality of heat and impulse and blind fury of

the battlefield.

There was no
kime
here, or at least not something most

people would recognize as such—No elegance—No coordina-

tion—just a battered, dusty animal, eyes wild and bloodshot,

with every part of his body on fire to do violence.

Even so, it was hard to get much velocity up. The arroyo’s

floor was uneven and I was ducking the rounds that seemed to

be angling in from all directions. But I dug in as hard as I could

and set my legs pumping. I needed to get to him before he got

a pistol in his hand and spotted me.

El Carnicero turned at the last moment before I got within

striking distance. His eyes narrowed, the jaw line writhed, and

he raised a pistol, racking the slide, aiming it at me and pulling

the trigger, but the magazine was empty. He snarled in fury, but

it was too late. I was on him.

There’s a trick to generating maximum force for a hit, to

slam into another body at high speed: a coiling down of the

muscles that pulls your body together into a solid mass before

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John Donohue

the last, sudden surge into the target. Most people make the

mistake of anticipating the impact and unconsciously slowing

down. But to really hit someone like this, you’ve got to tighten

together and drive through.

I gave it my best, filling the strike with all the fury I felt for

him and what he had done to me, but mostly for Sarah. I heard

him grunt with the impact and he went down. But the footing

was bad and I lost my balance as well, lurching to my knees a

step beyond him on the arroyo floor.

The Butcher was tough, I’ll admit that. He was still clutch-

ing the pistol as he rolled upright. I spun toward him. His

brown hands reached out for me, desperate claws. He slammed

the weapon against the side of my head; pain and a ringing in

the ears, a spreading warmth that felt like I was bleeding. He

scrambled closer and dragged me up against one side of the

arroyo wall. There was no attempt to hit me, he was simply

driving with both hands to get me upright. I heard the crack of

a high velocity round go by my head.

He’s propping me up. Hoping someone out there will take a

shot at me.

And they did. I slammed down on his forearms and twisted

away to get below the lip of the gully where the bullets couldn’t

reach. He was on me in a flash.

We rolled and lurched around on the dry ground. Rocks

dug into my back. I was reaching for the soft tissue of his face,

hoping to get a strike in to the eyes. He grunted as he drove

repeated knee blows at me, trying for the groin, but I deflected

them. He ended up battering my thigh muscles instead.
Rectus

femoris. Vastus lateralis.
It’s odd the things that shoot in discon-

nected bursts through your mind when you’re fighting for your

life. I knew that these muscles were big and strong ones, but I

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Kage

also knew that they weren’t going to take this much pounding

indefinitely.

We jerked and slammed each other, searching for a point

of entry, a gap in defense—a place to land a killing blow. But

grappling doesn’t work that way. It’s more cunning than brute

force. It requires you to harness the fury into something that

could be fluid and patient, but ultimately more deadly in its

relentless search for an opening.

Maybe that’s what brought me back to myself—somewhat.

I hadn’t completely slipped the reins of years of training. Some-

thing about the fight was familiar, and even in the heat of the

struggle, I experienced a type of clarity and detachment, even

as I tried every trick I knew.

A good, experienced ground fighter will keep tight contact

with his opponent. The fight slips and morphs in a thousand

subtle ways. You need the broad tactile input of contact to

sense an opportunity, a shift in position or leverage that flashes

the potential for a counter. But El Carnicero didn’t know that.

He wasn’t a ground fighter, he was a butcher used to hacking